Edgar was sitting on an upturned rain barrel cleaning tack as she entered the stableyard. "Saddle the roan, Edgar. I'm going to fly the merlin."
"Right y'are, m'lady." Edgar rose to his feet. "I'll be comin' along. Or you want Josh?"
"I'd best take Josh. I'd rather you stayed in the stables… keep an eye on the stud." Ariel frowned. She wouldn't risk provoking Ranulf further today by riding out alone, but it was also prudent to have a reliable watch on her Arabians while her brothers were around. If they started taking an unusual interest in the horses, she wanted to know.
She went into the mews, alongside the stable block. It was dark, and the air was heavy with the blood of small birds, the acrid smell of bird droppings. The hawks shifted on their perches, eyes bright in the darkness.
She went to the third perch and gently touched the merlin's plumage. He turned his sharp, unkind eye upon her, his cruel beak close to her finger. "You are a nasty one," she said affectionately, scratching his neck, refusing to move her finger.
"You flyin' Wizard this mornin', m'lady?" The falconer emerged from the darkness, moving as swiftly and silently as his birds. He held the hood and jesses.
"Just along the river." She picked up the thick falconer's gauntlet from a shelf along the wall and drew it over her right hand and arm as the falconer slipped hood and jesses over the hawk and released him from his perch.
Ariel took him on her gloved wrist and secured the jesses. "I'll be no more than an hour." She went out into the yard, where the groom stood beside the roan mare and his own cob. The wolfhounds, looking very pleased with themselves, sat beside the horses, tongues lolling.
"I ought to lock you in the stables for the rest of the day," she admonished them, but without much conviction. It was too late now to punish them. The groom helped her into the saddle; the hawk sat on her wrist, his hooded head to one side, his plumage slightly ruffled with the wind.
They trotted through the castle gates and over the drawbridge. The air was cold but clear, the sun bright in a cloudless sky, the road winding its way across the fens toward the distant spires of Cambridge.
Ariel shaded her eyes against the sun as she looked down the road. She could see only a trundling wagon. No sign of a belated bridegroom. She nudged her horse into a canter down to the riverbank, where she drew rein, unhooded the merlin, and held him up on her wrist to spy the land. A rook cawed from a copse a hundred yards away. A swift swooped low over the river, feeding on the wing. The hawk quivered. Ariel loosed the jesses, drew back her arm, and with an expert movement tossed the merlin into the air.
The earl of Hawkesmoor drew rein, looked up at the sun, and judged it to be close to eleven. The bulk of Ravenspeare Castle stood out against the skyline, no more than half an hour's ride. Behind it rose the great octagon of Ely Cathedral.
"You're in no hurry, Simon," observed one of his companions. Ten men formed the cadre, ranged behind the earl of Hawkesmoor.
"I intend my arrival to be timed with precision, Jack," Simon told him. "I've no desire to endure Ravenspeare hospitality a minute earlier than necessary." This was why he was arriving only just in time to stand at the altar with Ariel Ravenspeare. Afterward he would remain for the month of wedding festivities. And while he was a guest at Ravenspeare Castle, he would have a chance to pursue some personal business. Maybe even the woman he sought.
But first things first. He nudged his horse forward along the causeway ridged with frost-hard mud. He had no mental picture of the girl who would be his bride an hour from now. He had asked for no description and none had been volunteered. If she was walleyed, crookbacked, clubfooted, doltish, it didn't matter. He would marry her and he would remain faithful.
He glanced up at the pale blue sky to watch a soaring hawk. A plover rose from the reeds along the riverbank, then, as if alerted to the danger hovering above, swooped frantically, darting from side to side to avoid the killer now moving almost leisurely on its tail. Simon shaded his eyes and squinted upward.
"It's a merlin," Jack said. "No ordinary field hawk, that. Look at its flight."
It was the most beautiful killing machine. It seemed to tease the desperate plover, hovering over it with its magnificent wingspan, before dipping lazily toward the little bird. The plover flew upward in response, but couldn't maintain its height. It flew down, heading for the copse along the riverbank. The merlin plummeted with the force and accuracy of a lead bullet, its curved beak caught in a weak ray of sun. The plover was snatched from the air in the vicious curling talons, and the men on the road breathed again.
"Someone's flying it along the river." Jack pointed with his whip to where two figures sat their horses.
On impulse, Simon urged his horse into a canter, directing him off the causeway. The cadre followed him, cantering down to the riverside.
Ariel was watching Wizard. He was newly trained and had still been known to take off with his catch. So far this morning, he'd returned to her wrist, but she could sense that he was becoming impatient at handing over his well-earned prey. So intent was she on willing the merlin to come back from what had to be the morning's last flight that she became aware of the horsemen only when they were almost upon her, the soft ground muffling their horses' hooves.
Her initial reaction was one of angry frustration. Couldn't whoever they were sense that she needed all her concentration for the hawk? But it seemed that they did sense it. They drew rein atop a small knoll, far enough away not to distract the merlin.
Wizard remained in the air, wheeling and hovering with his prey. Once Ariel thought he was going to head for the copse, where he could tear the plover apart in peace. The group of horsemen were absolutely still on the knoll. Then the merlin arced and flew with leisurely flaps of his wings toward the gauntleted wrist held up to receive him.
He settled on his perch, fluffed his feathers, and docilely yielded his prey to Ariel's fingers. She dropped it into the game bag at her saddle and fastened his jesses.
"Bravo." One of the horsemen separated himself from the group and rode down to her. The hounds pricked up their ears, but the horseman gave them barely a glance. "There was a moment there when I thought he might renege."
Ariel's first thought was that she had never seen anyone as ugly as this giant of a man astride a huge piebald of ungainly lines but undeniable power. He was hatless, his dark hair cropped close to his head. None of his features seemed designed to go with any other. The nose was a jagged spur, accentuated by the livid scar slashing his cheek. His jaw was prominent, his mouth slightly skewed in a smile that revealed crooked but strong-looking teeth. Thick dark brows met above deep-set, wide-apart blue eyes.
She took in the dark riding clothes, the short hair of a Puritan. Then abruptly she turned away, gestured to the groom, snapped her fingers at the dogs, and took off at a canter along the riverbank, the hawk securely on her wrist.
Simon frowned. An unusual, not to mention ill-mannered, creature. But a striking sight in that crimson riding habit. "Come, we've dallied overlong." He gathered the reins and returned to the road, the cadre falling in behind him.
They heard the blast of a horn from the castle's watch-tower as they reached the causeway. "Someone's on the watch for us," Simon observed with an ironic smile. "Maybe they were afraid we weren't coming."
Twenty minutes later they clattered over the drawbridge and rode into Ravenspeare Castle.
The iron-studded doors to the Great Hall stood open, and as the bridegroom and his party entered the inner court, the earl of Ravenspeare, flanked by his brothers, emerged from the castle's interior. They were all three dressed in the blue and silver colors of the Ravenspeare arms, wearing lavishly curled, gray-powdered, full-bottomed wigs. The family likeness was startling in the charcoal gray eyes, the angular features, the slightly sneering lips.